Globo did not say how it got the information about the recording, which it said was offered in a plea bargain between Batista and his brother Wesley with prosecutors.

Impeachment call

Temer took over last year after the impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff, a political earthquake to a large extent engineered by the then-powerful Cunha.

There were immediate demands late Wednesday from leftist opponents for Temer’s removal. The Workers’ Party issued a statement also naming five other parties that called for his resignation and snap elections.

Several hundred anti-Temer protesters gathered in Sao Paulo, while in the capital Brasilia motorists honked horns and yelled “Temer out!”

Congressman Alessandro Molon, from the Rede party, filed a demand for impeachment with the speaker of the lower house, Rodrigo Maia.

Maia, who would have to accept the demand for proceedings to start, made no comment to reporters as he left for an emergency meeting with the government, Globo reported.

“Now there is… proof that the president committed a crime,” said protester Thiago Rocha, 33, in Brasilia.

“These people, like me, when they saw that on the news, they came here spontaneously, because they can’t take it any more. We want democracy, we are outraged with this putschist president,” Rocha, a university professor, said.

In Sao Paulo, Workers’ Party state lawmaker Beth Sahao said that the report confirmed what opponents had been waiting for: “Concrete evidence of corruption in the Temer government, but especially of the person of President Temer himself.”